


Broken Soul mates

by BIFF1



Series: RAREPAIR WEEK 2K16 [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Canon Death, Drama, F/M, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, but yeah damage is definitely done to wrists, eventual ColdFlash, goldenvibe - Freeform, it doesn't really happen, killerwave, past ronnie raymond/caitlin snow, possible wrist cutting trigger?, soul mate a/u, soul mate a/u's are hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5667625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIFF1/pseuds/BIFF1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa drags Mick to the soul mate ceremony with her and he's more than a little surprised that his soul mate is apparently Dr. Snow.<br/>Across town Caitlin is freaking out because the name on her wrist has changed from her late husbands to Heatwaves?!<br/>All she wants is for Ronnie's name back.<br/>All Mick wants is to forget all this soul mate bull.</p>
<p>Eventual Coldflash and Goldenvibe chapters to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Soul mates

Mick didn't have a soul mate.

 

He didn't have a soul so it seemed to fit him just fine.

 

His fire foray into arson had taken his home and family from him years before the ceremony. The foster families he had bounced around in until he was fifteen hadn't really given a flying shit about getting him into the class.

 

So his seventeenth birthday had passed without the soul ceremony just a job from the Santini's that involved a lot of fire. A kind of present from the family.

 

He'd rather set a pretty mansion on fire than have to do all that reciting and shit you had to do to make the mark show up.

 

Soul mates, just like so many other things were for the rich and religious. And he was neither.

 

Well he was occasionally rich and he worshipped the flame but that wasn't really the same.

 

No soul mate.

 

No soul.

 

No problem.

 

"I want to do the ceremony." Lisa told him quietly as they sat in the continental waiting for Len to come back from recon.

 

"Why?" As far as he could tell Lisa had been too young for the ceremony when her grandfather had died and Len had hated his mark so much he had burnt it off (rumour was it was a man's name and the kind of father he had had didn't like that idea. Not to mention the world they lived in hadn't always been so accepting) so he never would have moved stuff around to have Lisa do it.

 

"Don't you want to know who your soul mate is Mick?" She asked looking wistfully at her bare wrist.

 

"No." He grunts turning his attention back to the museum down the street, "I imagine it would add a whole new level of guilt to hookers." He always felt kind of scummy when he saw someone else's name on their wrists when he fucked them.

 

"Gross Mick." He can see her rubbing her wrist out of the corner of his eye and sighs heavily leaning forward against the steering wheel.

 

"What are you going to do if gun boy isn't the name on your skin." She holds her wrist to her chest and looks at him strangely.

 

Yeah as if the entire Rogue's gallery didn't know about her little crush on Ramon. Hartley had particular fun with that telling her storied about when they had worked together.

 

He raises an eyebrow at her and she relaxes a little bit, "He will be. I can feel it. I just... I don't know... I think it's romantic." Her voice dipped into that rare whimsical tone and he rolled his eyes and turned back to the street.

 

"Why are you telling me this?"

 

"About that," She sounded strangely smug, "I signed us up for the ceremony tomorrow."

 

He sits up quickly and turns to look at her, "You did what?"

 

"I signed us up. Well I wasn't going to do it alone."

 

"I'm not paying for that bullshit."

 

"I already paid for it."

 

"Why the fuck would you do that."

 

"Like I said. I wasn't going to do if alone. Lenny would throw a fit. You know how he gets about this stuff. I mean he burnt off his mark."

 

"How am I supposed to help with that?"

 

She shrugs, "I'm going to tell him it was your idea if he asks."

 

"He'll never believe that."

 

"He will if I tell him you were drunk when you signed us up. That you tried to sign Lenny up too but the program wouldn't take his name. For obvious reasons."

 

He growled and turned back in his seat to see Len leave the museum with a gift bag. Len would absolutely believe that he got drunk and did it. He had gotten drunk once and accidentally gave all of his money to some kids charity a while back.

 

Lisa smiled brightly at him and dropped the subject for now.

 

\----

 

There's a simplified ceremony for adults, well Lisa had only paid for the basic ceremony anyway, a mass thing at city hall that he feels weird about being in. The police aren't looking for him right now and Lisa had taken precautions it seemed because he has no problems even though he wished he had.

 

He gets a slip of paper recites the words (spelt out phonetically thank God) drinks the Dixie cup of green liquid and watches a name form on his wrist in messy cursive.

 

"Yes! I fucking knew it!" Lisa yells out beside him, arms raised in the air like she'd won some sort of contest.

 

He just shakes his head as the minister or whatever tries to get her to calm down. Looking down at the messy writing he narrows his eyes trying to get some letters out of the looping dramatic lines.

 

Must have been a doctor.

 

Wow were they going to be pissed when they found out their soul mate was a career criminal.

 

_Snow_.

 

"Dr. Snow..." He whispered to himself as the small room descended into happy chaos around him.

 

No.

 

It couldn't be.

 

He needed a drink, he glared at the scribbled name and letters became more clear, the less he wanted them.

 

_Caitlin Snow_.

 

Of course his soul mate would be that stuck up frigid team flash bitch.

 

Who he had kidnapped.

 

He wrapped the thick band of his watch back around his wrist, covering the words. He knew Lisa wouldn't ask him about his soul mate as they walked to the car. She couldn't stop smiling, she was too busy thinking about Cisco to worry about what poor soul had gotten burdened with him.

 

It wasn't exactly kosher to ask anyway. He had only ever seen someone's mark, read the name when he had been an enforcer.

 

People got crazy about protecting their soul mates. It was the easiest way in the world to get information out of someone. It was why Len wasn't the only one he had met in this life that had burnt off the name. Some high up fixer types had had the mark burned off too. Most grunts hadn't even had the money in the first place.

 

It had always been such a mid level problem that he had never had to think about before.

 

He got behind the wheel of the car Lisa chattering happily beside him, eyes bright, he could tell her cheeks were starting to hurt but he just rolled his eyes, started the car and wondered if he cared enough to bother with removing her name from his skin.

  
\----  
Caitlin's scream ripped from her throat unchecked and it sent everyone in Star Labs running to her.

 

She stood in an unused medical bay, bags of unnamed liquids at her feet, her hand tight around her wrist.

 

"Cait? Caitlin what's wrong?"

 

Her heart lurched up hard and her eyes picked with tears. What was wrong? Everything was wrong. Everything in the entire world, her whole world and everyone in it was wrong.

 

She holds up her arm, the wrap around bracelets that used to hide Ronnie's name from the world ripped and broken on the floor.

 

Dark and clear against her pale skin were new words, a new name that made her stomach churn and heave, she felt sick and sad and so angry she couldn't even form words.

 

Iris stepped forward from the crowd of men and took her arm carefully, lowering it and twisting towards her to read the name properly.

 

"It didn't say this before I gather." Iris asks her voice too even like she's trying to put on her journalist voice.

 

"It most certainly did not." The words come out ice cold and sharp, "This isn't right. This is wrong. It's Ronnie. Ronnie was my soul mate not... Not..."

 

God she can't even say it out loud.

 

Cisco and Barry are trying to get a peek at her wrist around Iris' hands, still looking so so worried for her.

 

With a sigh that seems to freeze the air around her she pulls her hand carefully from Iris's warm grip and raises it for them to see.

 

For them all to see her shame.

 

"M. Rory." Cisco says quietly as if they all couldn't read his brutally clear signature, "Do you think it means Heatwave..."

 

Barry shakes his head, "No, no way Rory is a pretty common last name. It could be anyone. Don't worry Caitlin, I'm sure it isn't Heatwave."

 

She drops her arm feeling exhausted, they didn't get it.

 

Of course they didn't get it.

 

If anyone was going to understand it would be Iris, who had lost Eddie. Who still wore her engagement ring on a necklace on certain days and thought no one noticed, who still had a thick banded watch covering the name on her wrist.

 

And she didn't seem to get it either.

 

It wasn't whose name was there.

 

It was about whose name wasn't any more.

 

"I'm going to go home." She tells them, voice tired and rough.

 

"Sure thing..."

 

They all nod their understanding but she knows none of them actually understand.

 

She had never noticed how often her wrist flicked towards her face until she desperately didn't want to see what was written there. Unlocking her apartment, opening the fridge, taking off her work clothes. Every movement flickered with M. Rory, in brutal scrawl she just knew to be that villains. 

 

Barry had been wrong. There could be no one else that this was. This name, those hard lines. It was him and it made her sick to think that only this morning Ronnie's signature had been written across her skin, faded but true.

 

She sits in the living room, with no lights on and stares at the terrifying note on her body. Like he had claimed her for himself and she felt the tears run silently down her face, throat thick, eyes burning. She had never been very fond of the whole soul mates thing, the ceremony was a bunch of suedo-science garbage. Her parents had been soul mates, and she knew how well that had turned out for them. She had been surprised when her mother had shown up out of the blue to stand behind her father when she had said no to the ceremony.

 

How could they back that ridiculous notion. If they were soul mates maybe their souls had been rotten long before Caitlin had ever been born because they were toxic. She had gone through with the ceremony if only to ensure that her mother would leave again, she had no intention of listening to them argue non-stop again. She had found no comfort in the messy handwriting on her skin, she had made no effort to find this mystical Ronnie Raymond.

 

Her parents had taught her that soul mates weren't always this perfect happily ever after ending match. 

 

When she had met Ronnie she had spent months pushing him away only to fall in love with him in spite of her efforts.

 

After the particle accelerator, and after the singularity, she had spent too many nights with her fingers tracing the lines of his name. It had been a small comfort against the dull aching  _end_  feeling in her chest. No matter what happened, no matter how long he was gone she would at least have this. 

 

Have this tiny piece of him with her always, everywhere.

 

And now...

 

"What have you done, you foul, horrible, man." She whispered in the dark of her painfully empty and silent apartment. She dug her nails into her skin, scratching her skin until the marks, the loops and lines had been erased by raw red bleeding skin.

 

Caitlin fell asleep her wrist held tight to her chest, raw and bleeding. It felt like a dull far away feeling in comparison to the fractures in her heart. 

 

She had lost him all over again.

 

__

 

Mick wakes up in the middle of the night a dull ache in his wrist.

 

Must have slept on it weird.

 

He pulls it close to his face in the dark and is surprised to see Snow's name mostly scratched out, it looks as if he had clawed it raw in the night but he never could have been so destructive. His nails are too short for that kind of mess.

 

Its with a half asleep brain that he worries if the good doctor was all right. He rubs his eyes and rolls over to go back to sleep deciding he doesn't care one way or the other.

 

He had just gone through with the ceremony for Lisa. He didn't put any merit into this soul mate thing, he'd ice his wrist in the morning if he needed to and get on with his day.

 

__

 

When Caitlin wakes up she pulls to her face, eyes closed tightly, willing Ronnie's name to be back. 

 

M Rory

 

A sob rips from her chest and she doubles over, folding in on herself.

 

She never should have let herself her talked into going through with the ceremony. She was a scientist, she always had been, even at a very young age and she was paying the price now for her compromise.

 

When she had met Ronnie she had been so sure that she had lucked out. She would have fallen in love with Ronnie Raymond no matter what the name on her wrist said, or his for that matter. She would have fallen for him in any and every timeline.

 

Why had it changed.

 

Why had his name shifted into these harsh lines.

 

She pushed herself up from the couch and typed her question into her phone.

 

_Changing name soul mate_

 

There weren't a lot of case studies but it wasn't unheard of. She was rare but not so rare that this might have been some sort of cosmic mistake. She devoured the articles, digging into the science of the soul, however shaky the reasoning and thesis on some of the papers were she often found there technique acceptable.

 

She lost hours to this sad research.

 

Every case had had the original soul mate die unexpectedly early, car accidents, combat, homicide and the like.

 

Caitlin found after the hours of reading and cross checking data that she felt no better with knowing the limit  _whys_  she had found answers to. She may have actually felt worse.

 

She takes a shower and wraps her wrist in clean bandages with an expert hand.

 

It was fine, she told herself.

 

After all she had first hand experience that soul mates didn't mean anything. She thanked her parents for being a fucking mess and tried to think of anything but Mick 'Heatwave' Rory.

 

__

 

His wrist heals pretty quickly, although he's not really sure if it ever really needed to heal in the first place.

 

This soul mate shit, was just that, shit.

 

He's having a drink with Len when it happens.

 

"I didn't think you had a mark." Len points at the marks on his wrist with the neck of his beer bottle.

 

"Oh." He twists it to look at the name, wondering if Len is going to bring up the good doctor or not.

 

A dark mark runs across the letters. Better than clawing at it.

 

"Guess they don't like you much." Len's voice is that far too even and pronounced tone.

 

"No, probably not." he drains his beer watching the strange magic of a marker somewhere miles away in another part of the city ran across completely different skin and marked him all the same.

 

He didn't like that.

 

That strange  _magic_ shit that went with all this soul mate shit.

 

"You going to go out and find them? Settle down? They going to make an honest man of you?"

 

"I know where they are." or rather he knew where he could find her. He just had no intention of doing so unless Len had some Team Flash related plan.

 

"And yet." Len motions around the dank near empty bar, the jukebox in the back playing all the songs it had with ice in the title. If he hadn't known Len before the whole Captain Cold thing he would have taken him for just another costumed joke.

 

"I don't want her, she doesn't want me. I only got this stupid thing done because your sister made me."

 

"Mmm." Len looks displeased with that, "Soul mates are a bunch of shit." Len echoes his earlier thoughts, and his eyes go to the scaring across Len's wrist, "Well... it should keep her out of our hair for a while at least."

 

"Where is she anyway?"

 

"Courting Cisco I believe."

 

"Another round." He tells the bartender as she passes and he stares at the blacked out name on his skin. Rubs it absently as they fall into comfortable shop talk.

 

Len is planning something good but it's still in the early stages and he has a job, a diamond heist next week. The partner is green and wants to make an impression on Len, and he is honestly just fucking bored.  
__

 

The alert on Cisco's computer goes off and she wheels herself over to it. Her hand on the microphone to tell Barry about the alert.

 

She clicks through into some security feed and her heart stops.

 

M. Rory.

 

She glances down at her wrist, at the faded sharpie and returning name under the twists of her bracelet. Something hot boils in her blood at the sight of him, something painful and aching and she can feel a scream in her throat as she puts down the microphone.

 

It's stupid and she doesn't even realize what she's doing until she's driving down the block of the jewellery robbery.

 

She's just so mad, and so sad and she's a god damn wreck and he's going around like nothing was different, like he hadn't destroyed her world at all. Like this mark, this stain on her wasn't even his fault.

 

He had done something and she was going to yell at him until he undid it.

 

Whatever it was.

 

She parks at an odd rushed angle and walks up to the store. She can hear the sounds of people inside and knows its the right store.

 

With tears in her eyes and an uncontainable anger she pulls at the front door only to find it still locked. With a roar of sound that sounds foreign to her ears she sends her elbow into the glass and fishes around the broken glass to the lock and unlocks the door.  
___

 

Mick hears the shattering glass from the back room. He looks the kid over as he keeps a narrow focus on the safe. Mick grumbles unhappily and goes to check out the noise, making a mental note to tell Len that the kid was too focused and would get caught. He seemed the type to roll on them too.

 

Mick has his gun up in front of him as he comes out of the back and instantly lowers it.

 

"Snow?"

 

"You bastard!" She screams at him, and Jesus fuck is she crying. Something unfamiliar pulls in his chest at the sight, why is she so upset anyway? It wasn't like he had actually done anything about being her soul mate.

 

"What, can't stand that a criminal is your soul mate?" His voice is a lot more serious than he meant it to be but she doesn't look like she's listening. There is blood on her arm from the door, she was a doctor, she should know to take better care of herself.

 

"Ronnie Raymond!" She screams the name and he actually takes a step back as she kicks over a display, "My soul mate was Ronnie Raymond and you... you... you erased him!" She yells, voice thick and breaking around the words, she holds out her wrist, rips her bracelet off and throws it at him.

 

It falls short, it would be funny if she wasn't so obviously...  _broken_.

 

"Ronnie Raymond, my husband! The love of my life, and all I had left of him was his name scrawled on my skin and you! you! What did you do! How did you do this to me! Why did you do this to me? I've done nothing to you!" She looks frantically around the narrow shop and her eyes are wild and glistening in the dim light. He can hear the tell tale whine of a silent alarm, a low electrical hum that didn't belong.

 

The alarm must have started when she had broken the door.

 

A handful of sharp expensive rocks flies towards him and it brings his attention back to her and her poorly contained rage.

 

It wasn't just rage though. It wasn't anger that had brought her here, it was sadness. He had gone along with Lisa and it had caused something to break in the good doctor, something important in her had snapped. Part of him wanted to fix it for her.

 

"Why did you do it Rory... why? why me? how did you do it? why did you target me? Because of the Flash? Tell me! Tell me how to undo this!" She screamed and felt hard to her knees and he steps forward to drag her up off the floor. Mick stops himself short, pulling his hands back to his sides.

 

Mick finally understood that feeling he had exploited while rising the ranks as an enforcer. This feeling in his chest, would it have still been there if he had never gotten this stupid mark on his skin, he didn't know, he'd never know now but looking at her on the floor crying and yelling profanities at him he had a strange feeling that he might have felt this anyway.

 

She had broken into this store just to yell at him, she had been so desperate and angry and depressed about this that she had looked at him like she would set the entire world on fire if it meant that he would burn.

 

"What the hell is this?" A nasally voice cuts through his thoughts and her shockingly blue language.

 

He turns to look at the safe cracker, he took too long. There was no way Len would let him in, and the way the kid glares at Caitlin made his chest tighten.

 

"I'm dealing with it." He tells him with a growl looking between Caitlin and the kid (he honestly hadn't been bothered to learn his name), the kid looks strange, unhinged and Caitlin is glaring at him with red rimmed eyes.

 

"Doesn't look like you're doing a good job of it." The kid pulls out a gun he hadn't even realized he had and raises it quickly to shoot her. 

 

Something  _snaps_  in him and he knocks the kid so that the shot he had quickly fired lodges itself in a display  _beside_  Caitlin's head rather than in it.

 

"What the fuck do are you-"

 

"Are you fucking kidding me!" Mick roars over the kid trying to right himself, "That's my fucking soul mate you piece of shit!" 

 

The kid raises his gun again and Mick raises his own, the flames leap out of the gun and grab onto the kid's sleeve. In a rage Mick shoots the gun in a large arch above him, setting the building on fire.

 

"You're out kid. Get out of town. Never let me see you again." Mick tells him hotly holstering his gun as the kid panics trying to put the fire catching on his clothes out.

 

Mick turns his back to him and closes the distance between him and Snow and stooping as he walks grabs her around the middle and pulls her tight to his chest, walking them out of the burning building.

 

Mick tosses her into his car and drives away from the scene as red lightening flies by them just ahead of the blue and red lights all going in the opposite direction.

 

He drives for a long time, twisting through back streets until they are outside of the city on an unused access road overlooking the water. He parks looking out at the dark water and turns the car off and turns to look at her. Her hair wild, cheeks flushed and he finds that she looks rather beautiful glaring at him with eyes that look like they could burst into tears at any moment but also could burn him alive if she felt inclined.

___

 

She doesn't have her phone, no purse taser (it's pink and has little rainbow stickers on it. A gift from Cisco), she has nothing to protect herself with. They are alone on some access road overlooking the inky black water, no one around for miles, the lights of the nearest building are just pale flickers against the dark skyline.

 

She should be scared out of her mind.

 

This man had kidnapped her once before, he was a villain, and yet...

 

She narrows her eyes at him, actively avoiding looking too long at any part of him for fear of finding a piece of him acceptable.

 

"What do you want from me?" Her voice sounds rough to her own ears.

 

"Nothing." 

 

"Then why did you do this?" She practically throws her arm out into the space between them wrist up so he can see his name on her wrist. There isn't much space between them but he puts his arm next to hers so that her own doctors signature on his skin. She stares at it and something in her chest feels tight. It was one thing to see his name on her own skin but quiet another to see her own staining his skin.

 

Claiming this monster as her own.

 

"Lisa didn't want to go to the ceremony alone. It wasn't worth arguing." His tone is low, slow, tired and it boiled her blood.

 

"You just had the- you don't even- You don't even  _care."_ She hissed.

 

"Not really. This soul mate stuff doesn't really do it for me. I don't know you Dr. Snow but I know you and I aren't soul mates, no matter what some magic kool-aid seems to think."

 

"I hate you." The words seem to freeze the air between them, there is an edge to them that is so sharp she thinks she may have cut her mouth on them. She hates him for so many reasons now. For taking away the last comforting thing she had left of Ronnie, the last piece of him that was truly hers. She also hates him for thinking the same way about the ceremony that she does. If he had just held his ground about the ceremony she could still have that piece and... god she doesn't know... she just wants to go back and she knows that she can't.

 

He doesn't flinch or move away, the ice cold words make him smile.

 

And she hates him just a little bit more for having a nice smile.

 

"I gathered that a long time ago Caitlin."

 

"Dr. Snow."

 

"What?"

 

" _You_  can call me Dr. Snow." something flickers in his face, like he hadn't even realised he had called her by her actual name and not some title. He pulls back away from her, leaning back against the car door. She pulls away from him too, leaning against her own door, feet on the seat adding a much needed buffer between them. She pulls her wrist close to her chest, fingers wrapped tight around his name, "I just want it gone. I want my husband's name back." She tells him, voice low, "It must be possible, I've seen Barry's mark. It's just a scar. I know it can be done I just don't know how..."

 

He makes a heavy sigh on the other side of the car, "What was so great about his guy anyway. I mean if he left you he must be a real piece of-" Her hand stings before she even realizes she's moved. She's leaning forward on her knees, in his space, his hand on his cheek, his eyes wide, surprised.

 

"Don't you ever say anything about Ronnie. He didn't  _leave_  he  _died._  He saved our city. He's a god damn hero and you don't even deserve to say his-"

 

"The Flash is dead?"

 

"What?"

 

"That would certainly explain why you wouldn't give his identity up if he was your husband."

 

She moves back out of his space and the air feels so much colder on this side of the car, "Ronnie wasn't The Flash." She sighs, "He is,  _was_  Firestorm."

 

Mick leans closer at that, "Firestorm? That man on fire? Fuck he's dead?" He seemed genuinely disappointed to hear that and it pulled at something in her heart. Something about him gets oddly sombre, "I know how to get the name off."

 

"You what? How?"

 

"It's fire. You burn it off. That how Len did it, that's the only way anyone know really works."

 

"Fire?"

 

It seemed only right. To remove Mick Rory's name with flame. Fitting. Too fitting really. It wouldn't give her back Ronnie's name, that would always be gone, it was lost to her forever now. Of all the reading she had done not a single person had ever managed to get the old name back. But at least she could be rid of Rory's name.

 

She would call that a win.

 

Burn it off, get out of this place, never see him again outside of her Flash work. Forget all about him, and the way he had raged against that man who had shot at her, the way he looked at her.

 

Like she was something a special and something terribly common all at once. It twisted her gut around, tightened her chest and she didn't care for it at all.

 

Caitlin's eyes search the car. This was Mick HEATWAVE Rory. He had to have matches or a lighter around somewhere. She didn't particularly like the idea of using his heat gun on herself. It was too powerful.

 

There. A zippo in the cup holder.

_

 

Caitlin moves quickly, a lighter in her hand and he watches as she flicks it open and snaps the flame into life.

 

_Fuck_

 

He swallows hard at the sight of her manipulating the flame and almost misses when she lowers the flame to her wrist.

 

“What the hell Snow!” He snatches the lighter out of her hand, tossing it away and grabbing onto her arm.

 

He pulls her close to check her skin, it's cool to the touch save where the flame had briefly touched her.

 

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” His voice come out in a growl of noise and he looks up at her, they are closer than he thought they would be, pulled together by her stupid attempt to burn his name off.

 

“You know what I was doing. You said that was the way to get the-”

 

“Yeah, but I'm the one that's going to do it.” He talks over her and she narrows her eyes at the interruption but something in her eyes clears.

 

“You'd do that for me?” Her voice is a whisper, her breath against his mouth and he pulls away quickly because he wanted to kiss her.

 

“It wouldn't be the first time I've burnt myself.” He pulls his gun out of his jacket and fiddles with the dials on the side. There was a low setting, he only knew about it because Len had made him learn this gun inside and out.

 

He looks up at her, there's still spots of blood on her shirt at the elbow and he lets out a soft sigh, “For a doctor you sure don't take care of yourself.”

 

He clenches his teeth and takes a deep breath and squeezes the trigger and a small flame dances across the dark looping dramatic lines of her name.

 

“Mick!” She yells and grabs the gun tossing it out of his hands into the back seat. She has her hands on his wrist and she's breathing a little heavily staring at him with wide eyes, “You idiot.”

 

“You wanted my name gone, this is how it's done Caitlin.”

 

She drops her head but doesn't correct his use of her name.

 

“Take me home.” She whispers, her fingers rubbing softly against his wrist, tracing the lines of her signature, “Just take me home Mick. I'll get used to it. What I really want can never happen. I can never have his name back.”

 

“Sure. Anything.” He tells her and is a little worried by how true that feels. She removes her hands from him and settles back into the passenger seat, she seems small now.

 

His hand reaches across the car and pushes some of her soft hair out of her face, hooking it behind her ear, amazed that she doesn't shy away from his touch or bat him away. She just turns to look at him and she looks so wrecked and tired.

 

There was something that needed to be said but he didn't know what it was so he started the car instead driving silently back into the city.

 

He hates this.

 

He knew, knew that this soul mate bullshit was and always would be bullshit. The worlds best con game.

 

But he kept sneaking glances at her in the dark and was worried that maybe it wasn't. Because he wants to fix this for her but he doesn't know how she could get Ronnie Raymond's name back onto her skin.

 

So he just takes her sparse directions to a nice apartment building and watches her disappear into the tower.

 

_

Caitlin has trouble getting into her unit without her keys but remembers after a few minutes of cursing her luck remembers where she had hid her spare key.

 

Once inside she cleans up the cuts on her arms and falls into bed.

 

She looks at Mick's name on her skin in the dark of her bedroom. Traces the sharp lines with her eyes, he would have burnt her name off of his skin if she had let him. She had watched the light from the gun dance roughly across his strong features and knew he was going to do it. The clench of his jaw, the shuttering breath.

 

She should have let him.

 

She couldn't. She presses her thumb hard into the lines of his name, small on her small wrist, she couldn't allow him to hurt himself on her behalf, to add yet another burn to the rest of the list of untreated burns marring his skin.

 

Not when he seemed so begrudgingly concerned over her own safety. As if he hated that he felt like that. Like he felt that tug in his gut that matched hers.

 

She didn't want another soul mate and she had certainly had her fill of men on fire. If she was going to get another soul mate, if that was her destiny why couldn't it have been someone boring, someone who had a stronger sense of self preservation.

 

She falls asleep wondering what about her soul seemed to call out to men on fire.

 

Caitlin wakes up early a dull pain in her wrist. He hadn't, after he had gone home had he just burnt her off his skin.

 

Turning on the light she looks at her wrist and can't stop the swell in her chest, the tears that fall and she pulls her wrist close to her heart.

 

He hadn't burnt her name off.

 

He had given her exactly what she wanted and she couldn't stop the sobs wrecking her body as she pull her arm away from her chest to check.

 

There it was.

 

Written across M. Rory, scratched in deep enough to scar was the name Ronnie Raymond. The R's sharp lines, the O's meticulous. There was a terrible and wonderful feeling in her chest because in that exact moment, crying in her bed at four in the morning, she knows that without a doubt something had been terribly broken in her parents because Mick Rory was her soul mate and it didn't feel wrong or traitorous or broken.

 

It felt right.


End file.
